GrahamY, as I understand it (and it is a long time since I did quantum mechanics) you can theoretically create a black hole out of any material larger than about 20 ng (the Planck Mass). These are not quite infinitely small, but go close enough for ordinary uses, particularly in relation to their gravitational attraction. It is density that is important in creating black holes, not mass. However, some quantum theories suggest that even smaller black holes are possible. Theories of evaporation of black holes with Hawking radiation would posit a position where black holes are temporarily smaller than this, before they disappear.

Scaremonger.

http://cern.ch/lsag/LSAG-Report.pdf

"The safety of collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was studied
in 2003 by the LHC Safety Study Group, who concluded that they
presented no danger. Here we review their 2003 analysis in light of
additional experimental results and theoretical understanding, which
enable us to confirm, update and extend the conclusions of the LHC
Safety Study Group. The LHC reproduces in the laboratory, under
controlled conditions, collisions at centre-of-mass energies less than those
reached in the atmosphere by some of the cosmic rays that have been
bombarding the Earth for billions of years. We recall the rates for the
collisions of cosmic rays with the Earth, Sun, neutron stars, white dwarfs
and other astronomical bodies at energies higher than the LHC. The
stability of astronomical bodies indicates that such collisions cannot be
dangerous. Specifically, we study the possible production at the LHC of
hypothetical objects such as vacuum bubbles, magnetic monopoles,
microscopic black holes and strangelets, and find no associated risks. Any
microscopic black holes produced at the LHC are expected to decay by
Hawking radiation before they reach the detector walls. If some
microscopic black holes were stable, those produced by cosmic rays would
be stopped inside the Earth or other astronomical bodies. The stability of
astronomical bodies constrains strongly the possible rate of accretion by
any such microscopic black holes, so that they present no conceivable
danger. In the case of strangelets, the good agreement of measurements of
particle production at RHIC with simple thermodynamic models
constrains severely the production of strangelets in heavy-ion collisions
at the LHC, which also present no danger."

So cheer up GrahamY

Fester, Agronomist and yours truly have explained that the black holes created in the LHC are too small to be self-sustaining and therefore no threat to life on earth.

Interesting that you are so frightened by the science of qantum physics, yet remain so skeptical of climatatology.

Hi Graham

That Precautionary Principle you mention with some disdain has created a history of gratuitous carnage when ignored:

1. Agent Orange: Vietnamese children continue to be born with hideous deformities. Monsanto, aware of the dioxin health impacts in the 60s, knowingly continued selling AO to the US for the spraying of Vietnam.

2. Maralinga: Shallow pit burial of plutonium. Heaps of plutonium-contaminated soil was buried at Maralinga. Almost 400,000 tonnes of it. It was buried in three massive holes.

The largest at Taranaki was bigger than four football fields, and as deep as a five-storey building. Alan Parkinson nuclear engineer was removed from the project when he began questioning the unsafe and life-threatening clean-up practices that were occurring at Maralinga.

His book: “Australia’s Nuclear Waste Cover-up” is required reading for those who scoff at the Precautionary Principle.

3. Bellevue Chemical Fire WA 2001: Largest in Australia - a real “cracker” night with 500,000 litres of hazardous waste exploding over communities. Waste containing perchloroethylene, PCBs, mercury, pesticides, cadmium etc. Department of Environment had no inventory of chemicals. Did not enforce regulations on operator but gave him a loan to clean the place up. Firefighters unaware of chemicals, lacked protective gear – exposed to God knows what!

4. Yummy red mud for farmers crops WA: WA Department of Agriculture sold red mud from Alcoa’s aluminium, hazardous waste stream to farmers for 50 cents a tonne. Sprinkled over each hectare were up to 30 kilograms of radioactive thorium, six kilograms of chromium, more than two kilograms of barium and up to one kilogram of uranium.

On top of that there were 24 kilograms of fluoride, more than half a kilogram each of the toxic heavy metals arsenic, copper, zinc, and cobalt, as well as smaller amounts of lead, cadmium and beryllium.

“I mean bin Laden is not going to go stealing this stuff to make atomic bombs out of it,” said an Agriculture Department research officer, Rob Summers.

And heaps more by request only!

"So why was not there not more public angst over the LHC?"

So what's new pussy cat?

Fractelle et al, if you read my original post properly you'll see I was never concerned about the LHC. The point of the post was the selectivity with which the "precautionary principle" is used. All the expert opinion says there is no unacceptable risk to the population from nuclear reactors, yet that doesn't stop large numbers of people in Sydney invoking the precautionary principle against the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, which is used to produce materials for use in nuclear medicine.

Why don't I have a problem with global warming? Well, all that CO2 has been up in the atmosphere before and life survived, so I think we will cope. And a slightly warmer world should be a benefit rather than a disbenefit. Anyway, unless you can think of a way of restraining the Chinese and the Indians, then CO2 emissions are going to continue to climb, so whatever happens, we're going to have to live with it. For that matter, it's not so easy to restrain emissions anywhere, as populations have been voting against increased energy prices.

And I think that peak oil will probably solve the problem, such as it is, anyway.

Graham

You state: "Well, all that CO2 has been up in the atmosphere before and life survived, so I think we will cope."

Earlier this year, scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii reported that their research suggested that CO2 levels are the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

Ice core samples of hundreds of thousands of years revealed that CO2, any period before the Industrial Era, grew no more than 3.6 ppm per century. The current CO2 growth rate is close to 100 ppm per century, which is more than 20 times as fast.

When you pump 16 billion tons of C02 into the atmosphere yearly, you're not talking about an occasional major volcano eruption, or peaks after an ice age, where the earth has thousands of years to adjust, and where it has all its natural C02 absorbing mechanisms in place.

It's a sustained deliberate increase in global warming gases - human caused, which has a snowballing effect, along with humans destroying natural C02 absorption systems.

Now the southern oceans are saturated with CO2 and can no longer absorb.

Currently, humans are emitting 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes.

Forget about India and China for the moment. The big Australian polluters continue to operate with impunity. As a result Australia's eco-systems are in bad shape.

The Precautionary Principle:

1. "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation."

2. "The present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations."

The sixth extinction is already underway, according to scientists not tied up with the politics of climate change.

Time to adhere to the Precautionary Principle I would say - pronto!